A Life Extended
by jelenamichel
Summary: Companion piece to my story A Life. Expands on all the snippets in that story about Tony's life from now until his death as a very old man. T/Z focus, but everyone else turns up at one point or another as well.
1. Lust

**This is a companion piece to my story **_**A Life**_**. That one was just a series of 27 snippets of no more than a paragraph that told the story of Tony's life from now-ish until his death. This piece will expand each paragraph to a short chapter. Is that cheating? I'm not sure. But here it is anyway. I'm using the summer of season 10 as a convenient jumping off point. And it obviously goes extremely AU.  
Warning for several major character deaths. Let's see if I can get you all the bawl your eyes out again. Also, some character-related info has changed in canon since I wrote **_**A Life**_**. Please excuse discrepancies between this story and canon.**

* * *

**LUST**

_He doesn't know what lust is until he finally gives in to it. Foolishly, be believes the act will scratch the itch that's been plaguing him for years. The reality is more like a hit of meth—he's addicted and dependent from the moment his hands first touch her bare skin. He takes her down the rabbit hole with him, and she goes willingly. It's a moment of weakness that sets him up for life._

…

In the absence of employment they take to meeting over meat. The Sunday roast dinner becomes a tradition in the months that Gibbs is on assignment and three of them have no reason to return to the Navy Yard. Tony, Ziva, McGee and Abby gather without fail to keep an eye on each other, wonder where Gibbs is, and support each other when they begin to fear the worst. Sometimes Ducky and Palmer join them and bring snippets of vague information they have overheard between the orange walls. But mostly they gather for the company. Because they are family. And because they miss each other.

There are nights when Tony, Ziva and McGee linger long after the others have departed at what the employed consider to be a sensible hour. They drink wine, lounge around, laugh and sometimes argue. And without fail, McGee is first to bow out and leave the other two alone to talk, heal and rebuild. Tony and Ziva assign the task the importance it deserves, and for the first time since they met they start talking openly. Honestly. As if they are truly in it together, working towards the same goal. Their statements of affection and desire become more brazen, but remain on the vague side of commitment for no other reason than habit. They bury hatchets, explain themselves, forgive and move on. They move closer emotionally. Physically, they remain apart. After all these years the barrier feels too heavy to remove. It's the one thing they don't talk about, but after months in each other's cozy company the silence begins to squeeze Tony's heart like never before. He feels desperate for change.

It's on a Sunday in August that he breaks. She has hosted the Sunday roast, and after the others have left to prepare for the working week or to spend a few hours with their significant others, he ends up making a move on his. All it takes is for them to accidentally bump into each other while cleaning up the kitchen. He walks into her while he's not looking where he's going, and she chuckles and holds onto the front of t-shirt for balance as she bounces back against the counter. Eyes meet, breath catches, and suddenly he can't think of anything else but how much he wants to touch her.

So he does.

His hands move to touch her hips before sliding up to her waist, and while he expects her to pull back and say it's not the right time, she doesn't. Either she is as weak as him or a hundred times braver, because her response is to grip his shirt tighter and arch her back, swaying her chest closer to his. The arch in particular targets his male instinct, and his hand skims around to the curve in her spine to press her even closer to him. She lifts her chin and tilts her head, and it doesn't matter if it is an invitation or a demand. The outcome is the same. They become hopelessly, blissfully tangled in a matter of moments as the lust they've kept on a leash for years is finally given the freedom to overtake everything else. It swallows both of them whole.

There is nothing tender about the first time. It is raw and desperate. Hard and demanding. Above all else, it is drugging. He finds addiction in her body and cries. The texture of her skin is made for his hands. The smell of her in bliss sends him soaring. The taste of her is divine. He accepts it as fact that he will never get enough of her. The moment that she falls apart will be etched in his memory. And she looks so beautiful that he can't help but follow her.

He stays the night. They don't talk much—and definitely not about 'what this means'—but they touch and laugh and breathe together. She seems as unwilling to let go of him as he is of her, and as he falls asleep he can only hope it will last.

He knows he can't live without her.


	2. Beauty

**BEAUTY**

_He doesn't know what beauty is until the first morning he wakes up with her and realizes he's completely in love. Her hair is wild, her lips are swollen and she's not wearing a scrap of makeup, but she makes his heart stop. This is her as she really is. Private, intimate, with all her walls down. Words of love and hope tumble from his lips before his heart can seek permission from his head, and then he holds his breath as he awaits her response. Right before hypoxia takes him out she tells him she loves him too, and then he almost passes out anyway._

…

That first night, he sleeps well. Only for a few hours, but soundly enough to awake feeling refreshed, optimistic and ready for the day. Ready for the week. Ready for the rest of his life.

He knows where he is before he opens his eyes. He can smell her skin. Feel her warmth. Taste her in his mouth. He can remember everything that got them to their final breaking point, and the moments that took them beyond return. He can remember how her accent got thicker as her body got hotter and tighter. He can remember that her eyes got darker and then so much clearer and happier. He remembers feeling like finally, after more than 40 years of trying, he finally ended up exactly where he was supposed to be.

He doesn't want to be the creepy guy, but he can't help just staring at her as he waits for her to wake. He has seen her first thing in the morning before, sleep-flushed and relaxed and unaware. He has always thought her to be beautiful. But there's something different about today. She steals his breath.

When she draws a deeper breath he quickly averts his gaze to the safety of her arm, and then counts to five before he nonchalantly lifts his eyes again to meet hers. Ziva blinks back at him sleepily, and he takes a chance by giving her a small, welcome-to-the-day smile. He is not prepared when she breaks into a smile that holds no restraint, and then rolls herself closer to kiss him before he even says _good morning_. The small part of his brain that is functioning on a sensible level thinks that at least some words around the nature of this development should be had, but it shuts down as soon as she stretches and then moves her body to lie on top of him. He drowns himself in her kisses while clutching at her body like it is a lifeline, and then…then…_God, yes,_ and then…she feeds the addiction that he didn't have until the night before. He'll be chasing this high for the rest of his life.

They lie together afterwards, sated and content for the moment. He still can't stop looking at her in all her golden and disheveled glory, but that's okay because she's staring right back at him. Her fingers follow a slow yet already familiar trail up and down his shoulder as his explore the dimples in her back, and he thinks this might just be one of the most blissful moments of his life. The smile she shows him is one of bare-faced happiness. He doesn't think he has ever seen it before now, but realizes it is what he has looked for his whole life.

Words tumble out of his mouth without consideration. "I love you."

It is the first full sentence he has spoken that day, and the words get a little stuck in his throat. But they are true, they are heartfelt, and she hears them clearly. She is surprised, that much is clear. He thinks she was probably only thinking as far ahead as finding some coffee for breakfast, and now he's gone and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like…that. He should take it back—it would be the polite way to overcome this awkwardness—but his head can't force his mouth to try. His heart wins this round, and he stay silent while he awaits her response. It comes right as his chest starts to hurt and his face grows warm from the breath he's holding back. He thinks he is going to die. But right before his heart gives out, she chuckles and lifts herself just enough to cover half of his body again. She kisses him lovingly, and then elegant fingers brush against his stubbled cheek and she smiles another smile he's never seen before—warm, honest, giddy.

"I know," she whispers to him. "I love you, too."

She kisses him again, then. And again. And again, until relief floods him and his blissful moment returns. He rolls her over and traps her beneath him, and he has to take a few moments to look down at this woman he loves beyond all reason. She is smiling for him again—God, she is _so beautiful_ when she smiles like this—and his heart shatters and comes together again.

"I want to make this work," he tells her. He has never wanted anything more than he wants this.

He is lucky that Ziva has come down on his side. The woman cannot be argued with once her mind is made up. For once, he will benefit from her resolve. She takes his face between her hands. "We will," she tells him with a stubborn nod.

He has never loved her more. And from that moment on, and for the rest of his life, he is unwavering in his contentment to be hers.


	3. Darkness

**A/N: After two happy, fluffy chapters, this one takes a significant turn. It's called **_**Darkness**_**, after all. I don't think I've ever put a trigger warning on anything I've written before, but this chapter probably deserves one. Suggest you read the italicized part before deciding if you want to read the rest. **

* * *

DARKNESS

_He doesn't know the darkness inside him until she tells him what they did to her. Steady, horrific words are whispered in a hush without prompt or reason, but he absorbs every one of them. _Feels_ every one of them like spikes being driven into his heart and soul. They scar his memory and blur his concept of what is just. They make him shake with rage and fear. His feelings towards her captors were already unequivocally murderous, but he begins to indulge in fantasies around their sniper's bullet missing its target so that his own hands might get to torture Saleem into a slow, violent and horrific death. For weeks after she tells him, he finds himself reaching for her as if touch will assure him she survived it. For months after she tells him, he smiles at the vision he conjures every night of her captor bleeding into the dust. For decades after she tells him, he thanks whatever nameless power gave her the strength to move on with her life and forgive. He knows if she had cracked, he would have broken with her._

…

"Hands. Their hands were just…everywhere. And never just one at a time."

This is the line that breaks him. He has coped with hearing the vile, sickening and enraging details she has drip-fed over the course of the weekend, but only up until this.

_Never just one at a time._ As if it would have been bearable if those pieces of shit had waited patiently for their turn with her in an orderly line. He knows that's not what she means. It's not even close. But it sticks with him because Ziva is strong and brave and the closest thing to a goddamn superhero he will ever know. Because he has watched her fight one-on-six before and come damn close to winning. He wonders how close she got to winning in Somalia before it all went to hell. We wonders if it ever seemed like a fair fight to her before she was overwhelmed by sheer numbers. He wonders if she ever looked around for him—her loyal backup—before she remembered that she was all alone. But he cannot bring himself to ask her, because he knows he doesn't have the grit to hear the answer.

And he hates himself for that.

On the night she bares those emotional scars to him, he tells her that he is in awe of her. He tells her that there is nothing he is more grateful for than her extraordinary ability to deal with the horror and keep moving on. And it's the truth. But it's not the whole truth.

The thoughts he chooses to keep to himself scare him more than anything since he thought she had drowned at sea. He wonders what he was doing while she was being violated. Watching a movie? Which one? Was he drinking? Was he making some dumb comment to Gibbs while a group of evil, despicable, filthy animals shared her around and made her bleed? Did she think of him while he slept in his comfortable pillow-topped bed and hope that he would come through the door and save her? What was she going through on the day he finally decided to get off his ass and do something? Was it worse than any other day? Was that why he was spurred into action? Because he somehow felt it?

Selfishly, he wonders how can she look at him when he left her there for so long. How can she stand to be touched? What if he grabs her one day in a moment of amorous passion and it triggers something in her that sends her running away from him forever? What if she ever mistakes his touches of love for ones of violence and control? Does she force herself to endure his contact because she loves him in every other way?

Is he hurting her without knowing it?

The thoughts swirl in his head for months until they finally slide down the back of his throat and start squeezing the life out of him from within. She notices the change—how can she not when he turns from sexed up to totally timid?—and when the day comes that she finds him in the grips of a panic attack, he is finally forced to admit to her what he's been thinking all along.

"I'm a goddamn cop," he whispers harshly as guilt swirls through his being and makes him sick to his stomach. "I am supposed to stop these things from happening. I'm your _partner_ and I'm _supposed to stop these things from happening!_"

She takes care not to talk down to him, but can't help stating the obvious. "Tony, you were not there."

And that kills him. "Right! I _wasn't there!_ I should have been."

"You _couldn't_ have been!"

Rage robs him of his control and perspective, and it explodes out of him like he has never experienced before. He presses shaking hands to his eyes as he tries and fails to keep a grip on reality.

"I swear to God, Ziva," he rages in a voice he doesn't recognize as his own. "I know you don't like it, but I swear to God I will kill the next person to touch you. I will hunt them down and I will pull them apart with my bare hands to make them scream, and _I will love it_."

He has careened past common sense and he doesn't think he cares how far he goes. But Ziva does, and she catches him before he is looses himself in fury. Soft hands grip his wrists and try to pull him back to earth.

"Tony, stop."

"I hate him."

"He is dead," she reminds him harshly. "Let it go."

He can't. "I want to dig him up—"

"Stop." A firm tug pulls his hands from his face, but he keeps his eyes squeezed shut. He doesn't remember the last time he felt so black.

"It is not your fault," she tells him. The strain in her voice pulls at his heart.

"I left you there with him," he insists, begging for her condemnation. "With all of them."

_Never just one at a time_.

"That is not what happened." He has never heard her so insistent, but felt so disconnected from her viewpoint. "Stop turning your nightmares into fact."

Her first-hand account of what did happen has made him so angry and guilty and hurt and scared that his brain just can't sort fact from fiction anymore. But he _is_ positive that he should have had her back right away, not after she'd endured months of torture. And he is positive that he has no idea how to make life better again. For both of them.

"I'm sorry, Ziva." It hurts his heart to say it, and even more to mean it so much.

Yet for once, she doesn't understand him. "Why?"

"Because I don't know how to take this away from you or make it better." The admission almost chokes him, but Ziva finds it within her to meet his failure with love. Because to her, life _is_ better. Infinitely.

Her lips on his cheek are comfort he doesn't deserve. "Tony, you take it away every day. Because you give me a reason to move on from it."

Her admission is such a surprise to him that it gives him a moment's pause. But his guilt has been growing since that filthy bag was pulled off her head—maybe since he killed a man in her living room—and it's too strong to be felled with sense. "I just don't know how you can look at me."

For a moment, she doesn't. Her eyes float around the room as she sighs, and he thinks she might be thinking of giving up and leaving him. But Ziva isn't the type to give up. She takes both his hands between hers and looks him directly in the eye.

"Listen to me," she says softly, but the strain remains in her voice. "I did not tell you what happened there because I wanted to hurt you, or be terrorized by it. I told you because I love you and I need you to know. So that you understand me."

He isn't sure he has ever really understood her. Especially not when it comes to her feelings on this. But he will try, because there is no acceptable alternative.

"I do not want you to carry hate on my behalf," she goes on. "I just want you to be Tony. The man you have always been. That is all I need."

He accepts that his issues are only hurting her, so he tells all the right things to reassure her that the two of them will be fine. That he will sit beside her and listen whenever she needs him to. That he will stop being afraid of hurting her, and stop treating her so preciously. But over the next year, he does anyway. And she knows it.

And for that, they both hate him just the tiniest bit.

* * *

**So…happy holidays, everyone!**


	4. Lost

**LOST**

_He doesn't know what it is to feel lost until his first few weeks as team leader in a new city. He finds that he doubts himself when he doesn't have his old team to rely on, and the bravado he's spent his life projecting takes a serious hit. The devil within him whispers that he'll never be able to make a decision without his boss. He'll never be able to move confidently without his partner at his back. He'll never be able to lead someone without the existing talent of his probie. He's so busy worrying that his new team won't respect him that he doesn't notice that they already think he's some kind of legend._

…

He second-guesses everything.

He is a man who is used to wearing an almost impenetrable cloak of professional bravado, but the hits he takes to his confidence in his first weeks in San Diego leave bruises that he is sure everyone can see. He devotes too much time to trying to hide them, and although he knows he must let them go and get his head in the game, he just can't find comfort in his new title.

Team leader. Some would believe he has had it coming for a long time, and once upon a time he even owned it. But back then he had McGee and Ziva at his back. They had their problems with the arrangement, sure. But he always knew they would come through. They always knew _he_ would come through. The three of them knew how to work as one being to achieve a goal, but he wonders now if such synchrony has screwed him over. Because without them and Gibbs, he has to think harder about what he is doing and why. He has to explain his thoughts and actions to other people. And he finds that when he has to think about something and explain himself, he cannot make a confident decision.

His gut is useless.

And so, he second-guesses himself. Should he get in a suspect's face, or tread softly and hope they'll trip up? Should he trust his team members, Priya and Daniel, to talk to witnesses on their own, or should he oversee everything at this early stage of their team's development? Should he share Gibbs' rules or run with his own? Should he go hard on his team and make demands on their time, or give them the leeway never afforded to him? Should he apologize for yelling? Should he yell more? Should he smack and glower? How much trust should he have in his team by now, and what should he do with it? Should he teach them to be leaders, or teach them to stay put?

Decisions begin to paralyze him.

One morning on his way to work he takes a wrong turn and gets lost in the city. His sense of direction has never failed him before now, and he can't help but wonder if this is the universe telling him that he needs to turn around and get his ass on the first plane back to DC. As he tries to get the car turned in the right direction (he's not even sure where that is) he gives serious thought to how badly an unexpected return to headquarters could hurt him and his career. Vance will be pissed, that's for sure. He offered Tony the team leader job and leaned hard on him to consider it in a favorable light. Giving it up after a few weeks will blacklist him from every opportunity and promotion for the rest of his NCIS days. He supposes that should be a bad thing, but he considers it because he misses his east coast life to the point of physical pain.

He misses Ziva like air, sleep and food. He misses Gibbs being there to steer him down the right track. He misses McGee's attempts at moral and intellectual superiority. He misses Abby's hugs and rallying speeches. He misses Ducky's lectures. He misses Palmer being Palmer. He misses the sense of family and camaraderie he has carried for the last 15 years. And although he is a grown man who bears witness to the worst that people do to each other, the simple thought that his little piece of the world has changed forever brings tears to his eyes.

God, what the _hell_ is he doing here?

By the time he finally finds his way to the office he has decided that he is going to step down. He doesn't know what he's doing in his new role, and he is convinced that not only does his team know it, but that word must have reached Vance by now. Soon enough his indecision in the field will put the team in unnecessary danger, and so he reasons that his resignation will likely be welcomed.

As he walks into the bullpen he can barely lift his head, but Priya is oblivious to his discomfort and depression. She is too busy congratulating him.

"How the hell did you do that?" Priya wants to know. "How did you know that we'd find the murder weapon in the ceiling?"

Tony pauses by her desk and looks at her blankly while his brain catches up with what she's talking about. The case they've been working for a week that has been devoid of physical evidence, even though they have a solid suspect.

"We found the knife?" he double-checks as his case-related adrenaline immediately kicks in.

Priya pulls up a photo on the plasma screen of Daniel grinning as he holds up a bloodied carving knife. "In the ceiling above the suspect's desk at work," Priya confirms. "Just like you said. Dan went in with local LEOs this morning." She stands to confront him with all of her five feet and two inches. "How did you know?"

He has to shake his head to loosen his memory. "Because of the makeup of the dirt forensics found in his shoes," he says.

Priya leans over her desk to check her notes. "It was essentially plasterboard," she says.

Tony nods. "Yeah. When we turned up at the suspect's workplace to interview him, there were bits of white dirt and dust on his desk and around the floor by his feet, but no one else had the same dirt."

Priya frowns as she tries to follow. "Okay…?"

"And there was a slight tear in the ceiling tile above his desk."

"There was?"

Tony feels his confidence returning almost like a tangible object. The tear had been obvious to him. Hadn't it been to her? "Yeah. Back in the day when my dad worked in an office, he said one of his colleagues went crazy and couldn't keep up with all the work he had. He started hiding files in the plasterboard ceiling tiles above his desk. Had to stand on his desk to reach them."

They both lift their eyes to the ceiling. It is made up of plasterboard tiles, just like every office ceiling in the entire word. Except for the ones that have giant skylights.

"So, you saw the dust and decided he was hiding stuff up there?"

Tony shrugs, and smiles genuinely for the first time in an entire week. "It was worth looking. Right?"

Priya crosses her arms, leans back against her desk and looks at him with something uncomfortably close to awe. "So, this is a very important DiNozzo lesson."

"A what?"

Priya chuckles with self-awareness. "Me and Daniel have been making a list of the very important DiNozzo lessons you've been giving us," she tells him. "You know, things like _roll with the punches_, _don't take work home_, _never talk to suspects the way that they expect you to_. I guess we can file this one under something like _even dirt is important_."

He channels Abby for a second. "Dirt is always important."

"Got it, boss," she says with a nod.

His confidence gets another much-needed boost. But he has questions. "I haven't been giving you lessons," he points out.

Priya looks puzzled. "Of course you have," she says obviously.

"I don't think I've ever told you to roll with the punches."

"No," she says at length. "Not explicitly. But you've been really flexible with the twists and turns of our cases, and so far we've closed every one of them. Seems like there's a lesson there."

He had no idea she and Dan were even paying attention. But the fact that they have been gives him a shot of pride. "Oh."

"Daniel's on his way in with the knife," she tells him. "And the suspect." She rubs her hands together with barely restrained glee. "Interrogation time!"

Tony smiles as he sits behind his desk. It didn't take much more than someone displaying a little faith in him, but he feels so much more positive about this west coast team leader thing than he did five minutes ago. It turns out that he has a team that listens to him. One of his agents is meticulous about evidence and gets giddy over every find. The other one lives for breaking suspects down and getting to the truth. And they are both so eager to learn. From him, apparently. So maybe he _can_ lead them. Maybe he does know what he's doing. Maybe he's not a complete screw up.

And although he misses his east coast life and his family, he thinks that maybe he should hold off on giving Vance his notice for another day.


	5. Anxiety

**A/N: Two in a row today because I made you wait so long. Sorry.**

* * *

**ANXIETY**

_He doesn't know what anxious is until the two agents he's responsible for are seriously endangered. They're watching each other's backs just like he taught them to, but their shared stubbornness puts them in situations that make him want to tear his hair out. In a moment of blinding clarity he realizes what he and his partner must have put their boss through for almost a decade. As soon as his agents are both safe and accounted for, he calls the boss man and leaves a message of apology that amuses the silver-haired patriarch to no end._

…

It has been a bad day. The worst, he thinks, since arriving in San Diego several months ago. His two agents—although he is reconsidering whether the two of them really _deserve_ to be called agents—have apparently gotten over their initial awe of him and started disregarding direct orders in favor of running headlong into danger and flirting with death. He should be proud of them, but he's terrified. And he thinks their actions may have caused him to lose a few years off his life.

He wants to throttle the pair of them.

Later in the evening, he will share all his personal and professional aches with Ziva. But today's epic screw up by both his subordinates has provided him with an epiphany of sorts. So before he vents his anger to his partner, he must first make an overdue apology to Gibbs.

He takes his cell phone out to the small yard behind his house until the urge to smash plates has dissipated, and calls the man who is still number two on his speed dial. It goes to voicemail, and so he finds himself sharing his frustration with a machine and some kind of small bird that he has noticed hanging around his yard of late. Its chirps wake him up before sunrise every morning, and the sight of the little red and green thing sours his mood even more. Particularly when it ignores his attempts to shoo it away.

He embarks upon a one-sided conversation. "These…" he struggles to find an appropriately scathing description that does not include an expletive. His vocabulary fails him, and he settles on something much softer than he intends. "_Idiots,_" he spits out, "ran off into a building today—_against my explicit orders, Gibbs!_—to try to dismantle a _bomb_, which neither of them have _ever_ had _any_ experience at doing, but for which they apparently assume they are qualified because they have guns and badges had have seen _Hurt Locker_ more than once in their very short lives…"

He pauses as he loses and then regains his train of thought. "They ran in there when I told them not to!" he yells at the bird. It shakes its tail feather in contempt. "And they _didn't_ disarm the bomb, Gibbs, and they barely got out of there before it exploded! And I want to _strangle_ the little so-and-sos right now. I want to strangle them and then fire them."

He wanders a few steps over grass that is too green and beneath the sun that is too hot as he catches his breath "But before I do that, I want to apologize to you, boss. Because I had this moment today when I realized that this is what you dealt with…God, I don't know how many times, from me and Ziva. I now understand why you always slapped me so hard. And I feel like the two of us were probably responsible for turning your hair prematurely white.

"I want you to know that karma is real," he continues. "I know it is, because it's kicking my ass right now. And I swear to God, if Daniel and Priya end up with a relationship like mine and Ziva's?" He shakes his head and slices his hand through the air, rejecting the idea outright. "You can just shoot me," he decides. "You can take me out to the back of your house and shoot me. Because I'm not putting up with that. I don't need the stomach ulcer or the white hair. You've seen my dad. Put a white beard on him and he's frickin' Santa Claus! And I look just like him! I'm too young for that, Gibbs. I've got to have kids before I start looking like an old man!"

The heat rising in his cheeks passes uncomfortable and approaches unbearable. He hates the damn sun on the west coast. _Hates_ it. He turns on grass that needs to be mowed yet _again_ and heads back to the cool of his little house that he hates as well because it's too empty without Ziva. That's his problem with this whole damn side of the country. It has an unacceptable lack of Ziva. He hates this stupid assignment, and his goddamn team who act like they're on their own and only need each other's eyes on their backs.

The thought leads him to another epiphany that stops him in his tracks. He stands in the middle of his outdated kitchen with his cell phone still glued to his ear. Gibbs' voicemail records ten full seconds of silence as Tony slowly realizes that he's _jealous_ of Daniel and Priya. Because they're partners. Excellent partners. And Tony's even excellenter partner is 2,600 miles away.

He sighs hard enough to send his shoulder to the kitchen wall. "I'm just sorry, Gibbs," he says, finally calming down. "I'm sorry for every time I acted like a cowboy. And for every time me and Ziva went off and tried to be heroes on our own and didn't listen to you." He thinks that over and revises. "I mean, that was usually Ziva's fault, but I'm sorry anyway. On behalf of her, too. And I'm sorry for making you worry so much." He grins as he finds the tease too hard to resist. "But most of all, boss, I'm so, _so_ sorry about your hair."

He feels better now that he has gotten it all off his chest, and hangs up without saying goodbye. He wonders whether the message will ever be heard. The Great White Luddite has never mastered voicemail. But it doesn't matter. Tony will just tell him again when he goes home for Christmas.

Home. His heart aches for it.

He grabs a beer from the fridge and decides it's time to let go of his frustration (for tonight—those two knuckleheads are going to get yelled at some more come morning) and chase relaxation. He pops the lid and heads for the couch, and then makes his next call.

"David."

The sound of her voice makes his tension ebb away.

"Sweetcheeks," he purrs.

Her tone slides from professional to flirtation. "Good evening."

He takes a long draw from his beer, and then leans back and closes his eyes. "It's finally Friday night on both coasts. Tell me what you're wearing."

Ziva gives him a throaty chuckle and it draws a smile across his face. Frustration isn't welcome here for the rest of the night. He's got phone sex to have.


End file.
